Governor of Kano state Abdullahi Ganduje said three million children are out of school in his state alone, stressing the need to curb Africa’s population explosion.

Speaking at Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, UK, Ganduje noted that, the population explosion in Africa is a reality and education is not matching up with population growth.

“One important factor that divides the population of the world into two is education, whether the population will be an asset, depends on education, whether it will be a liability also depends on education,” Ganduje said. “The population of students in Kano state now is over three million; the population of those outside the school system is also over three million. So if we are talking about Africa, we can confidently say the level of literacy is inversely proportional to population. Are we safe?

In Nigeria, over 10.5 million children are out of school, according to UNESCO — and this is the highest anywhere in the world.

At 198 million in 2018, the United Nations projects that Nigeria’s population will double by 2050, to be the third most populous nation in the world, after only India and China.